It is the end of January 2020 and India continues to witness tumultuous times. I do not recollect, ever having witnessed such anxiety, helplessness, anger, resolve and the urge to make my voice heard, as I did on January 5, 2020, as I watched the news reports and digital images and videos of the naked assault of intolerance, power and brute force on the students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). It was an attack not on JNU but on the fabric, future, and consciousness of India. Although the JNU episode was related to the cut in the educational budget, the hike in fees and the boycott of the administrative process of enrolment and registration; both these episodes brought home the threat of Indian State’s “brute power” in situations that it is misused or not applied to suit the whims and fancies of individuals or ideologies.
Just when: (a) India’s largest minority was reconciling itself to the outcome of the Babri Masjid judgment, not because the Supreme Court had delivered justice or upheld the rule of law but because it came from an institution whose finality it had agreed to abide under the Constitution of India; (b) the larger public innocently believed that this judgment would lay to rest the communal wounds that were made to fester for the last three decades and help India regain focus on issues of job creation, economic revival and social spending – the government’s actions on the (National Population Register) NPR, (National Register of Citizens) NRC and (Citizenship Amendment Act) CAA (read with CAA 2003) re-opened old wounds. As a student leader, Fawaz Shaheen said: ‘It has the potential of defining Indian politics for the next 30 years’ by creating the “new other”.
NPR, NRC, and CAA have reversed the national healing of 72 (seventy-two) years which time had brought about between followers of India’s two largest religions that they had suffered at the hands of the cataclysmic “Partition” and “communal pogroms” that followed. There have been protests, counter-protests, orchestrated attempts by the State and the party in power to malign these protests. Brute exercise of State power has played out to suppress / prevent protests and curb fundamental rights of citizens resembling the declaration of an “Emergency” in India, ever since CAA received Presidential assent on December 12, 2019.
The opponents of NPR, NRC and CAA have pointed out logically and rationally that the combination of NPR, NRC, and CAA lays down a scheme, which will create an exclusionary India, premised on religion, and serves as a backdoor for turning India into a “Hindu Rashtra”. CAA will give rise to a multitude of persons who may avail of the “parachute route” to citizenship of India being provided by Section 6B of the Citizenship Act. Once NPR and NRC are implemented and/or during their implementation – the loyalty of such persons (who receive citizenship through the CAA) to the State will be greater than that to the Constitution. With the CAA in action, the power to revoke citizenship continues to be vested completely with the State and places an unnecessary emphasis on ‘documentation’.
Apart from the technical argument in favour of CAA that Article 15 of the Constitution does not apply to persons other than ‘citizens’ and it is the State’s prerogative to undertake reasonable classification (especially) for citizenship, the proponents of NPR, NRC, and CAA, advance arguments based primarily because it is supposed to be unpatriotic to question the Prime Minister and the Home Minister. They say CAA is a powerful decision that is essential and integral to the brave “New India” and the repercussions of this process are ‘legitimate collateral’ that one has to pay for the making of “New India”.
A democratic nation-state is bound by the borders that make up the country, and the family home is bound by the contours of the structure that makes up the house or the modern-day flats/apartments. Like in a family home which is made up of members of the family, bonded by blood-relations, a nation is made up of a large mix of people of different genders, races, colours, religions, classes, castes, professions, physical and mental attributes, ideological inclinations, etc., playing their respective roles in nation-building, connected by the feeling of belonging, sanctified by the contract – called the Constitution – with a promise that each will be heard and concerns shall be addressed to the extent these do not affect any other group adversely, among others – when decisions are taken by the democratic nation-State.
A democratic state necessarily acts very much like the family home – but is guided by the Constitution which provides a more robust, rational and stronger bond than that of the blood – and the leadership of a democratic state is expected to ensure, that not only is the Constitution adhered to in ‘letter’ but also in the ‘spirit’ that resulted in the formulation and creation of the nation-State. Unfortunately, today, the Indian State’s leadership refuses to even acknowledge the existence of legitimate concerns and the existence of persons who will be affected by its decision concerning NPR, NRC and CAA. Does the government believe that the “collateral cost” arising from the NPR, NRC and CAA is a legitimate cost that needs to be borne? I would like to believe for India’s sake that this is not the case.
When seen from this prism, in today’s context, the challenge for the opponents of NPR, NRC and CAA, is that the ‘power’ to decide on the repealing and withdrawal of NPR, NRC and CAA vests solely with the group that has been a proponent of NPR, NRC and CAA. The opponents of NPR, NRC and CAA have only the option of reaching out to India’s larger population by creating awareness. The Indian State’s leadership has demonstrated unwillingness to hear, listen to and address or assuage the concerns of the opponents of NPR, NRC and CAA and an unexplainable inability to shed its ideological objectives. This is nothing but equivalent to an abdication of responsibility by a decision-maker of a family-home when faced with opposition concerning a decision that he/she has taken.
From my personal experience, I can say abdication of such nature will be unpardonable by future generations and results in non-communication complicating lives and throwing serious challenges to the continuation of the family home as a unit. Dialogue and healthy debate are fodder for the making of great democratic nation-states. Unfortunately, the Indian government appears to be inclined to exercise its “power” to convince the affected and to speak the language it wants to hear about NPR, NRC and CAA – an attribute of ‘intolerance’.
I salute the spirit of the “Young India” and minorities who, despite being aware of the state’s propensity for ‘intolerance’, have dared to initiate the conversation around NPR, NRC and CAA. I pray that a conversation that has been initiated by them sees its logical and rational conclusion – with the Indian State’s leadership displaying the pragmatism and inclusiveness of the decision-maker of a family home – with the same openness displayed by the opponents of NPR, NRC and CAA.